


Playing Doubles

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Independence Day (Movies), Jurassic Park Original Trilogy (Movies), The Fly (1986), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alien Abduction, I'm going to have to add a bunch of tags as I go tbh, Multi, Other, instead of bombarding you with a million that aren't yet relevant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-09 22:38:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16458350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Most people don't search the multiverse for their own exact physical doubles with the express purpose of abducting and torturing them, maybe killing a few...The Grandmaster, of course, is not most people. He hasn't been most people for, gosh, a billion years, two billion?And things just get so boring, if you can't come up with new ways to entertain yourself...





	1. Day One- Ian Malcolm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DictionaryWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Game Of Intersections](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15622980) by [DictionaryWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites). 



> Over on the 10 out of 10 Goldblums discord, a few of us came up with this really wild massive crossover, and we've riffed on it and built on it, and that first night, we all laughed and said 'of course no one is really going to WRITE this, that would be INSANE, and we all have such heavy workloads already'.
> 
> Literally the next morning, Dic and I came back and said 'so hey, I'm writing this story'. 
> 
> That was... a while ago. And since then, he has made good and I have thrilled to chapter upon chapter of really great fic, while I have hopped around, writing in not remotely chronological order, and posting nothing in return. So here I am trying to pull my weight at last.
> 
> If you have not already been reading The Game of Intersections and its partner fic Fuck The A-Team, do yourself a favor and do so (I'll link it where they stick 'inspired by' since there's already so much up and we've been doing so much brainstorming together). If you have been, then I hope you also enjoy my take on it, though I wouldn't fault you for a hot second for preferring TGOI, which is a masterpiece. We'll use a lot of the same characters and hit many of the same events, because we've been talking about all the things that could happen in this universe ever since we first came up with the idea-- and hit me up if you want a link to the discord to join in the behind-the-scenes-- but there will also be a lot of differences, too. 
> 
> (and hey, I'd read so many stories with this premise if you want to join us in playing with the JGCU crossover sandbox)

When Ian wakes, it’s with a start, leg aching. He’s strapped to a bed, the room he’s in dark. There’s another bed, another person strapped in.

 

This isn’t home. Not that he isn’t sometimes strapped to the bed at home, but it’s a familiar bed and familiar straps, and Alan and Ellie are always there, or at least one of them is, he’s never strapped to anything and left alone. There’s never another guy strapped down with him, either.

 

Well, once. Alan, bless him, wanted to try, to make sure it was really  _ comfortable _ . 

 

The man strapped to the other bed isn’t Alan. Which is probably good for Alan, but Ian would be calmer with him. Even in the dark, the slight bit of light that runs over the outline of him, he’s the wrong shape for Alan. Something about his profile catches at the corner of Ian’s brain and says something is very wrong here, but he doesn’t know what, doesn’t know why. 

 

The straps retract suddenly, and Ian rubs at his wrists on reflex, though they aren’t at all sore. He can’t have been strapped down for long. He sees the other man sit up and swing out of bed, only to reel dizzily and then right himself.

 

“When the doors open, please proceed down the hall.” A pleasant voice says, over some unseen speaker. “When the doors open, please proceed down the hall. When the doors open--”

 

The doors open. There’s light in the hall outside, it spills in and Ian gasps, seeing the other man’s face. His face. At this distance, he doesn’t need his glasses to know that, he’s seen his own blurry face in mirrors since he first started needing glasses to begin with. Hair’s different, but… everything else looks the same.

 

“What the hell?” The man blinks at him, steps closer, leans in, keeps some distance still between them. Close enough for them to squint at each other and trace over the fine details that make up the similarities, and it’s just about all similarities.

 

“Well said.” Ian carefully levers himself out of bed, and it’s a long moment before he’s moving without limping, as he heads for the door. The stranger steps to his bad side and offers an arm, and Ian thinks of Alan, shakes that thought off. Alan isn’t here, is perhaps safe at home. He wants to believe Alan is safe at home, but how could anyone have gotten him out of their bed in the middle of the night like this without disturbing Alan and Ellie? There would have been a struggle, they wouldn’t let this happen, unless all three of them had been drugged. Drugged, and then only Ian taken? Only taken because he looks like this other man?

 

He’d been between them. He’s still wearing his pajamas. The floor is warm under his bare feet, which is nice, he guesses, but it doesn’t do much about the fact that he’s wearing a pair of black silk pajama pants and nothing else, nothing else because Ellie is wearing the shirt, Ellie is wearing the shirt and a pair of Alan’s boxers, and Alan had offered Ian an undershirt to sleep in, but the night had been warm enough when he’d been snuggled in between them, he’d said ‘all I need is you’ and had them both tucked against him…

 

It’s warm here, too, but that’s not much comfort.

 

His doppelganger is wearing pajamas also, grid-patterned cotton pants, a white tank top, grey socks. He’s leading Ian at a snail’s pace to the door.

 

“We can speed up, if you want.” He offers. “I’ll be fine, really.”

 

“Sure. You be my eyes and I’ll be your legs-- well, a crutch, anyway. I, uh… I don’t have my glasses.”

 

Ian hums. “I might have some bad news for you. I don’t have mine, either. But it looks like an empty hallway. Straight shot to… uh, to whatever.”

 

The man chuckles mirthlessly.

 

“David.” He says. “Levinson.”

 

“Ian Malcolm. You, uh… you wake up in a lot of strange places?”

 

“Not like this. You?”

 

“Not in a long time.” He jokes. It comes out a little off. “Not like this, no.”

 

There are other doors, but the voice hadn’t mentioned those. They head for the end of the hall, where the lights are brighter. 

 

There’s another man there, another face that could be Ian’s face-- well… when he was younger, at any rate, but still. A dead ringer for how he’d looked back in the day, down to the long hair and the physique.

 

The physique he’d maintained pretty well, right up until the island. Extensive physical therapy can only do so much, isn’t doing the same things he used to do, is still working on ‘repair damage’. 

 

He’s wearing a sheet, shifting nervously, and he stares hard at both Ian and David, but he doesn’t seem  _ shocked _ , or it’s not a fresh shock, it’s just what’s left from when he began processing his situation. 

 

“You okay?” Ian asks. 

 

“How did I get here?”

 

“That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question.” He shrugs. 

 

“I thought ‘where are we’ was the sixty-four thousand dollar question.” David says. 

 

Ian takes the room in. It’s  _ large _ , one side is dominated by a sectional sofa and a variety of coffee and end tables. The other side has a couple of armchairs, a strange collection of soft shapes and cushions. There’s a second wide hallway, a main door opposite the space between both halls, an enormous window out onto ramshackle skyscrapers and violet skies.

 

He feels David  _ jump _ at his side and turns to see a fourth man-- and how he came to join them, Ian doesn’t know, he hadn’t heard a door, hadn’t heard a footfall, hadn’t heard the slap of sandals, the guy’s wearing sandals, the guy is wearing  _ clothes _ , except they’re not normal clothes, they’re some kind of gaudy costume, and he has their face as well, but older. Still… there’s no mistaking that’s who he and David would be in twenty years time, twenty-five. Minus the hairstyle and fashion choices, he doesn’t think a guy who wears pajamas like David’s would go for gold lame robes and pearlescent blue makeup. The guy is carrying a  _ staff _ .

 

“Seth, baby, where’s your roommate?” He asks, and that answers one question, anyway, the guy in the bedsheet is Seth. 

 

“He won’t, uh, he won’t come out of the room. He’s just… he’s panicking real bad, I thought if I could figure out what was going on here, maybe I could… Maybe if he had some answers he’d calm down, I don’t know, I thought if I could get some answers maybe it would fix things.”

 

In Ian’s experience, answers aren’t very helpful mid-panic attack. Before one can get going, or when one is winding down, sure, but not in the middle of one.

 

“He said he forgot his mantra and he just fell apart.” Seth adds, and the fourth man tuts.

 

“Sounds like somebody doesn’t want to play. Well, we’ll take care of that. You say he’s having a real bad time? Mm, well, Sakaar-- hah, Sakaar’s not for everyone. But you guys, you’re ready to play, isn’t that right?”

 

Ian is  _ not _ , but he keeps his mouth shut, follows the guy dressed like a cheap disco wizard down the second hall to a room just like the one he and David had left.

 

Seth’s roommate is  _ young _ . Shit, what is he, twenty? Curled up on the floor and crying, rocking, hyperventilating.

 

“Hey, hey,” Ian says softly, trying to gauge whether or not he can kneel down next to him without hurting himself today. It’s not a good day. “You’re going to be all right, just breathe. My name is Ian, can you tell me your name?”

 

He starts carefully levering himself down, reaching out, but before he gets there, the guy in the robes gestures with his weird staff, and the boy  _ melts _ , leaving Ian to scramble back in horror, landing on his ass and scooting away as fast as he can manage. He gags, can hear David and Seth do the same. He reaches their feet, grabs for David’s leg. When he looks up, he can see Seth and David clinging to each other’s arms, both staring at the puddle, the staff, the man who’d done it. 

 

“What the  _ fuck _ ?” Seth whines.

 

David still has a hand clamped tight over his own mouth, but he glances down at Ian, before looking back to their probable captor. Ian doesn’t know who else he’d be, at this point. This has to be the guy in charge of bringing them here, keeping them here. Why, because they all have the same face? It’s possible he’s an older captive and he’s taken on the role of guard in exchange for some privileges, but that suggests such a system in place… Then again, there’s clearly a lot going on, so… So what?

 

“Good thing the three of you are all ready to play, huh?”

 

“We’re ready to play.” David says, and for how horrified he had been, how on the verge of retching, there’s a comforting steel to his voice. Oh, it wavers, anyone’s would, but there’s a resolution beneath that.

 

“There’s no body.” Ian croaks, looking up to Seth and David again. They move together to lift him up onto his feet, getting under his arms when he proves unsteady. “There’s no body, what do we do?”

 

“Don’t worry, we’ll, haha, we’ll get housekeeping on that. By the time you need to go beddy-bye…” The fourth man turns to Seth. “Well, I mean, baby, you’ll never even know he was there.”

 

“No.” Ian shakes his head.

 

“Well, honey, you can’t ask Seth to sleep next to that.”

 

“I mean-- they can’t… they can’t clean him up like he’s a  _ spill _ , he’s a person. They have to… to put him in something, put him in something and bury him, I don’t, I don’t know, they can’t mop him up like he’s nobody.”

 

“He’s nobody now.”

 

Ian looks to David for some kind of support, sees his lips moving. 

 

“I-- I don’t know who he  _ was _ , he could hardly talk to me at all.” Seth says. “I don’t know what to say about him, should… should we say something? I mean… like what? If we did. Like what?”

 

“He was a kid.” Ian says. “He was a  _ kid _ , he was scared…”

 

“He had my face.” Seth frowns, turning to glance at Ian, and then back down at the puddle. “Our face. I thought it was a dream, or an accident, but it’s not. This isn’t what my dreams are like. And if it was an accident, we wouldn’t… if it was a mistake, or a coincidence, we wouldn’t have the same face.”

 

“It’s a real downer, I know.” Their captor says, like he hadn’t… hadn’t waved his staff and melted the boy. “Why don’t we head to the living room and start over? Get things, get things right, huh?”

 

Ian shakes his head. At his right side, David doesn’t budge. Seth starts, and then, reluctantly, stays put.

 

“What? What is it?”

 

“We-- we can’t  _ leave _ him.” Ian says.

 

“You can’t leave the puddle?”

 

“A man died!” David snaps, though after a glance to the staff, he’s a little cowed.

 

He rolls his eyes at the three of them like they shouldn’t even be bothered, waves the staff around and gestures with his free hand, and the puddle vanishes, pajamas and slippers and all. “There. Are we done now?”

 

David looks to Ian. His chin quivers a moment, but he makes no argument, only shrugs. Ian looks from him to Seth, and Seth looks ready to be out of the room where it had happened. 

 

“Are you okay to walk?” He asks, and when Ian nods, he separates from him with a little nod, but he walks close by.

 

When they reach the living room, Ian takes a corner of the sectional that allows him to put his feet up, sinks into the spot and massages at his thigh. David and Seth both sit, feet planted on the floor, backs straight. They both look ready to rise, ready to move, in a way Ian can’t be. It’s useless envying it, it is what it is. He doesn’t think they’d leave him. They picked him up off the floor before, all three of them are in something together here. If he can’t trust them, well… then he’s shit out of luck.

 

“Welcome to Sakaar, we have a great little planet here-- well, party poopers aside, what a first day. I’m the Grandmaster, it’s… kind of my planet.”

 

“What happened to him?” Ian asks. “When you made him disappear, what happened to him?”

 

“You are really hung up on this, sweetheart. Nothing happened to him. Or, he’s nothing. Atoms scattered to the winds, baby, that’s all we are, atoms. And it’s my planet, so, uh… hah, it’s my atoms. He’ll… integrate with what he integrates with, or he’ll just be part of the noise of the universe, that’s what happens to all of us. Well, all of you. Not me. Not ever. I’ll just be the Grandmaster. I guess if I wanted to, I could add your atoms to my atoms, I don’t know what that would do.” He looks Seth over, then laughs. “Well… maybe I’ll leave your atoms right where they’re at for now, honey, and we’ll just see how it goes.”

 

“So we’re on another planet?” David asks, asks it the same way he’d ask ‘so we’re in Hackensack’ if he was a little turned around on a road trip. Should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque. All that jazz. Like it’s not a monumental thing to be on an alien planet on the whim of a madman with a magic staff.

 

“That’s right.”

 

“What, uh, what kind of planet?”

 

“Well, we don’t run Mac OS seven-point-five.” The Grandmaster says. 

 

Ian’s Quadra 950 runs OS  _ 7.1 _ , and it’s not even three years old. 

 

“What year is it, for you?” He asks.

 

“Ninety-six.” David says.

 

“Eighty-six.” Seth frowns. They look at each other, then at Ian. 

 

Ian looks at the Grandmaster, smiling gleefully at the three of them. 

 

“Closer to you.” He says at last, nodding to David. “Ninety-four.”

 

About a year of physical therapy. About a year since running away to Montana on a wish and a prayer. About a year since he met Alan and Ellie, since they brought him home, made him theirs. A year of the worst and the best his life has ever been. A year of forward progress. And now?

 

And now he’s on another planet, which is crazy, but he finds himself believing it. Based on the view. Based on the doppelgangers. Based on the Grandmaster. Based on the easy way David accepts the fact that alien planets exist, without seeming like he’s crazy himself.

 

“How’d we get here?” Seth asks. 

 

“Mm, there you go.” The Grandmaster winks at him. “You’re here because I picked you out. Can’t get enough of that pretty face.”

 

He reaches out, cupping Seth’s chin, and Seth cringes, but he looks at the staff and allows it.

 

“Oh, ahah… honey… I think you’re my favorite.” The Grandmaster lets him go with a pat to the cheek. “Nice as the view is, though, let me show you to your closet, huh?”

 

Seth wraps his sheet a little tighter around himself, unsure, but David rises with him, and gives Ian a hand up, and the three of them move together. 

 

The Grandmaster indicates one of the dressers, and Seth slides on a pair of briefs under his sheet before letting it fall, pulls on a plain white tee shirt. He goes to the closet, opens it to show a half dozen or so identical suits, another slew of identical plaid shirts, identical pants. 

 

It’s the most basic ‘human male’ wardrobe Ian can  _ imagine _ , outside of jeans and a white tee shirt. The idea that this might be their new uniform as captive earthlings rankles, but Seth dresses without complaint. Which, to be fair, Ian might have done if he’d had to show up naked on another planet and found anything at all in his size.

 

Seth throws the sheet and a blanket over his shoulder and grabs a pillow, eyeing the empty bed, the spot where there used to be a puddle that used to be a man. 

 

“Think I might take the couch for the next night.” He shrugs, sheepish. “It’s… it’s different, when it’s a-- a human person.”

 

Different from what, Ian does not ask. He doesn’t have it in him to ask. Not tonight.

 

“If you don’t want to be alone, we can work something out.” He offers. 

 

“I just… I just want to go back to sleep so I can wake up back on my own couch.” Seth shakes his head. “But that’s not happening anytime soon.”

 

“You were sleeping naked on your own couch?” David’s brow furrows, but then he shakes his head. “Just knock if it gets weird, I guess. If it’s morning, we might as well get dressed…”

 

Ian shrugs. They head back down the hall, and Seth drops his bedding off on the couch, before electing to follow Ian and David back to their room. 

 

David opens his closet. More plaid shirts and chinos, some jeans, at least one pair of shorts Ian hopes were selected at random and not based on  _ anyone’s _ personal taste-- but not identical. Ian relaxes at that, opening his own. A black suit, a grey suit, black jeans, black slacks, grey slacks, black shirts, grey shirts, black leather pants, black leather jacket… a closet that might as well be his own, which is nice, except it means David probably owns a pair of those awful shorts.

 

“You ever wear any colors?” Seth asks, though there’s not any judgment to it. 

 

“I like to know whatever I grab out of the closet in the morning will work.” Ian shrugs, and Seth nods.

 

“Yeah.  _ Yeah _ \-- I mean, why waste the  _ time _ , time you could be spending on something worthwhile!”

 

He’s enthusiastic about it, about finding someone who gets it, his mind off of his roommate, if only for a brief moment-- and for a too-brief moment, Ian is the same, finds himself smiling at the young man who’d found a somewhat odder solution to the clothing issue than Ian himself. 

 

“Exactly. Better things to worry about. So what’s worthwhile, for you?” He asks, before turning to David. “What do you guys do?”

 

“Well-- well, that’s, it’s a little difficult to explain.” Seth starts.

 

“Really difficult to explain lately.” David nods.

 

“The fact that I’m currently teaching university level math is probably the only part of my life that isn’t difficult to explain.” Ian says. Even then, how he got from ‘bestselling author and in-demand guest lecturer’ to ‘non-tenure track professor in the middle of nowhere’ is… definitely difficult to explain.

 

He changes, pants and shirt chosen at random. Lightweight slacks and a polo apparently. There’s a cane in the back of his closet, black shaft and silver doorknob style handle. He’s grateful for about two seconds and he supposes he should be glad to have a cane provided at all, considering the bad day his leg was having before he wound up on the floor, but... The doorknob handle, though… The materials, colors, the general aesthetic, it’s so like his own, except his cane has a handle made to fit a human hand, made to be gripped and held. This was designed to look good, not to be useful.

 

“Check your dresser.” David says. “Top left drawer.”

 

Ian turns to him-- he’s dressed, cargo pants, plaid shirt. Glasses! Ian limps at speed to get from his closet to his dresser, damning the handle on his cane the entire way, and in the top left drawer, sitting on top of a folded black sweater, his glasses. 

 

It doesn’t banish the headache and the sick feeling in his stomach entirely, to have them back. But it eases the parts that come from not having had them. The rest, he has to chalk up to this whole experience.

 

David may be living a couple years into the future, but he looks young, younger than Ian. If he’s ever bothered with trying to look cool, it wasn’t when he chose his glasses. But there’s something comforting about his sense of style, or lack thereof. The shirt that could have come out of Alan’s closet. The sense that he, too, has better things to worry about than fashion, he’s only gone about it his own way.

 

The three of them troop back out to the living area, where the Grandmaster is waiting. 

 

“First door on the in-side as you head down the hall is your bathroom.” He gestures to the two halls, the space between them. “And then you have this beautiful space to relax in, I really have spoiled you with this suite, kiddos. Of course… I wouldn’t, uh… I wouldn’t recommend wandering around outside this suite, without me. Sakaar’s a… a lively place.” 

 

He chuckles around the word ‘lively’ in a way that makes Ian’s skin crawl.

 

“What about the other doors?” Seth asks.

 

“Mm… well, you’ll just, uh, you’ll just see, won’t you? You guys, you hungry for breakfast?”

 

Ian isn’t. He can’t imagine being. Seth shifts, uncomfortable. David stays still and silent.

 

“I said, are you guys hungry for breakfast?” The Grandmaster leans forward a little. His hand shifts just slightly on the staff.

 

“Yeah.” Ian nods. “Yeah, we’re-- just a little disoriented. Of course we’re…”

 

“Hungry.” Seth finishes, tone miserable, and he moves in closer to Ian and David as the three of them fall into step behind the Grandmaster.

 

The corridors are wide, the ceilings are high, their footsteps echo against the metal flooring, and the sound bounces off the metal walls, the space seems designed to be loud. The room the Grandmaster leads them to is big and open, like the common space in their suite. There’s a dining table in one corner, vast windows looking out at the purple sky, the purple sea, a couple tall towers and a colorful shantytown spreading out around. A long glass-topped table, twenty chairs of gilded metal and electric blue glitter vinyl. 

 

_ Twenty _ . Was this room prepared for them, or did the Grandmaster use it for dinner parties, other guests? All those other doors they hadn’t looked behind, other rooms like their own?

 

The other side of the room, there are buffet tables, chafing dishes. The Grandmaster smiles expectantly, gesturing, and so Ian heads to the buffet, picking up a plate, David and Seth falling in behind him.

 

“You want me to scoop for you?” David offers, he and Ian standing over a chafing dish of what looks and smells like ordinary scrambled eggs from ordinary earth-based chickens. Although really he supposes there’s no telling. 

 

“Sure.” Ian nods. It would save him the juggling act, putting his plate down to pick up the spoons or the tongs… “Don’t give me much, it’d just be a waste.”

 

“You know the worst part?” Seth asks, as he takes the serving spoon from David, hesitates, and then sets it down, no eggs making their way to his plate. “I’m  _ famished _ . I could… I could eat a horse. After that I shouldn’t be, right? After… everything. I shouldn’t be. But I’m starving.”

 

There’s some kind of unrecognizable meat in one of the dishes, and Ian shakes his head. All three of them pass it by. Ian nods when David offers to serve him a waffle. Doesn’t bother with butter or syrup. David takes some butter, and otherwise his plate looks like Ian’s. 

 

Seth fills his plate with waffles, drowns them in syrup. There are urns of coffee at the end, smells too much like coffee not to be, and David and Seth each fix a cup, before casting guilty looks to Ian, hands full.

 

Ian shakes his head, setting his plate down, fixing his coffee one-handed before balancing his cup on the empty space between the small scoop of egg, the waffle pushed a little to the side. He’s done this before, had been to a conference when he was relying on the cane heavily, full-time. Figured out how to navigate the buffets set up at breakfast and lunch. The more formal dinner had been a relief in comparison, but by the third day, he was a pro at taking the buffet one-handed. It was nice to be spared most of the trouble, he appreciates David’s matter-of-factness over it, that it never felt like it was  _ about _ Ian’s cane. The cane was what his hand was full with, but it was about keeping things moving while he had one hand occupied, not the reason for it. 

 

They cluster together at the nearest end of the long table, Ian directly opposite the Grandmaster, but at least there’s some distance, he feels a little better with that distance even if it doesn’t mean he’s safe. The Grandmaster relaxed at the head of his table, some kind of bubbling, smoking drink in his hand, a bowl of some kind of alien sorbetto that’s a solid shade of what is simultaneously electric pink and not any color at all, this void that hurts his head to look at too long. 

 

“Mm-- mm, I’d offer you some, I’d offer you fellas some…” He gestures to his bowl with his spoon, takes a sip from his drink, inhales the copious smoke. “But, uh, it’s really not fit for… anyone’s consumption. If you’re not, ha, an Elder of the universe, it, well… it just makes beings, uh, crazy. This is, oh, I’m sorry you can’t try it, though. It’s… First, you have to harvest a meteor from this, uh… this one quadrant, you crack it open, you harvest the, uh, the color from inside, and you process it until you have a liquid, and then you can do anything with it, but… Well. It’s just delicious, you can really taste the emotions no mortal being was meant to feel. I’ve heard if you-- you-you, you mortal, uh, guys-- if you were to take a bite, you’d feel like your head was split right open with a railroad spike, but like… you also get an orgasm.”

 

“I find there are easier ways to get an orgasm, thanks.” Ian pokes at his eggs. “Without the madness.”

 

“Aw, but what fun is that?” The Grandmaster chuckles. “How are you liking your, uh… your earth breakfast? That nice?”

 

He makes himself take a bite. It continues to be indistinguishable from any diner scrambled egg Ian’s ever had. He nods dutifully, David does the same. Seth hums around his mouthful of waffle, regarding the Grandmaster warily. 

  
“Good, good. See, you guys are, are fast friends. You’re settling right in! And after breakfast, well… then we’ll have some real fun. How do you feel about a show, you like a little entertainment? I’m going to show you boys… just a  _ real _ good time.”


	2. Day One- Seth Brundle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their first look at 'fun' on Sakaar comes after breakfast. Seth was not prepared.

By the time Seth gets to the bottom of his breakfast, the waffles are so soaked through with syrup that they’re really just mush. 

 

It’s not that he doesn’t feel bad. His roommate and all, even if they were strangers. That had been horrific, he’s just… He feels like he went to bed without dinner, and he knows he ate, he ate at his regular time, the regular amount. Calorically optimal for keeping his body in working order, he should have woken up feeling a little peckish and ready for his usual routine, but he’d been so hungry that even what they’d seen-- and smelled!-- in his room, it couldn’t put him off. 

 

The others barely eat, and he feels guilty for being able to, but at the same time, they need to keep their strength up. Whatever kind of ‘fun’ this Grandmaster wants to have with them, they should be eating well when he gives them the opportunity, they should be keeping themselves prepared and their bodies in the best possible condition. 

 

He’s not doing that, either. He should have taken eggs. Without protein, he’ll be weaker, not just physically but mentally. It will be harder to withstand whatever might be coming. But the eggs hadn’t really looked good.

 

Honestly, the waffles hadn’t even looked good. 

 

Well, of course not. His body was hungry, but mentally, emotionally, of course he couldn’t think about wanting food. The waffles were the last option and with nothing looking good, he grabbed what was there at the end. He… he hadn’t paid much attention to how much syrup he was drenching them in. They’re a mess, but they’re a mess he continues to mindlessly shovel into his mouth, as the awkward breakfast draws on. Maybe they’re just waiting on him, it stands to reason. He’s the only one with a real appetite, the Grandmaster doesn’t seem to eat much, though he enjoys what he has enough. But David and Ian are only nibbling at their own breakfasts and pushing the food around their plates while Seth eats…

 

He feels like he could lick the plate clean, except that’s… that’s probably pretty disrespectful to the dead, that was his roommate, and he needs to eat, but he could stand to not enjoy it. Not that he really does enjoy it, he can’t quite register having eaten it all, he feels like he’s just watching life happen to himself without experiencing it. Ever since he went back to his room with the others and saw the Grandmaster melt the poor guy, who was only having the worst day of his life to begin with, whose only real sin was not handling things as well as Seth was, as well as the others. He could have pulled himself together, they could have pulled him together, if they’d had time. Ian could have, anyway. Seth couldn’t have, not like… Seth isn’t the most reassuring, he guesses, or he would have done the right thing then and there, and all four of them would be eating breakfast together now.

 

It’s not that he thinks he’s a cold person or anything. He’s logical but he’s not unfeeling. He’d wanted to help, he just… he never would have gotten down on the floor and talked the way Ian did, soft and comforting, he doesn’t know how to be that. He knows how to look for answers, he knows how to repair things-- not this, none of them know how to fix what’s going on here, but, but things. He goes about these situations the best way he can, he goes about every situation the best way he can. He likes solutions, solutions are neat and tidy and they make the world better, and he doesn’t know what the solution is to being trapped on an alien world, by a guy who can melt people, and who acts like it’s nothing when he does it.

 

What is the Grandmaster, even? He says it like ‘Grandmaster’ is his name and his species and all there is to say about him, like he’s… above them, somehow. Like he’s so much more than human, even though he looks human. Well maybe so, he’d done all this. 

 

It makes Seth think of lab animals. You’re not supposed to get attached to them… he does, sometimes. It depends on the animal. He gets attached. Most of them die. He moves on. He doesn’t know if he’s too soft or too hard or just foolish. He likes animals, but they’re tools, too. That’s just how it is, that’s how it’s always… how it’s always been. Lab animals. They’re part of the legacy of scientific progress. Even if you treat them with respect and kindness, depending on the nature of your work, you could be sending them to their deaths, and… and did they view him, in some way, as he views the Grandmaster? Some strange, elevated being with the power to end a life in horrific, incomprehensible ways? Is the risk of death worth food and shelter and safety until the end? Do they love him for his ability to show kindness more than they fear him? The smell of death after a failed trial, does it cling to him, does it make them think they could be next, the next animal he has to work with? He looks at the Grandmaster and wonders if he could be next, now. He can’t imagine having any genuine love in his heart for the thing that’s taken him from his life and exposed him to the horror of before.

 

Does the Grandmaster think he cares for them? That… that’s what truly horrifies him, now that his mind has begun spinning its wheels. The way that he genuinely cares for animals he works with, knowing he’ll lose a certain percentage at the very least… the way he’s always thought he does, the way he’s always felt like he was good to them during their lives… does the Grandmaster see himself that way? Does he think he is benevolent, giving them closets of clothes and breakfast buffets to pick and choose from? Does he think he is as kind a master as they might have, giving them as fair a life as they’d have in the wild? Does he flatter himself to think if he is patient and gentle, they might accept his touch out of love and not fear? When he looks at them, what does he see? Does he understand how terrifying he is to them or does he think he’s teasing them in fun, that they respond unreasonably?

 

Seth doesn’t know. It’s impossible to read the Grandmaster’s thoughts. He’s alien. More alien than Seth thinks a man is to an ape. He talks about madness-inducing ice cream harvested from the color of a meteor, and breakfast cocktails that would melt a human being from the inside out-- he looks Seth right in the eye and laughs as he talks about how it would digest you right back, and then he sort of… he smiles a smile on a face that could be Seth’s in old age, only it’s a smile he’s never smiled and never will. Can’t imagine he would. He looks Seth over, and he can’t tell if he’s being measured the way you might size up an animal, or leered at sexually, or just stared at because he’s sitting here next to Ian and David who can barely eat, and he’s scraping the crumb-strewn syrup from his plate.

 

When had he finished eating? He’s not even sure if he’s full. He has to be, the pile of waffles should sit heavy on his stomach now. 

 

He looks to Ian, and tries not to look at Ian’s plate. He doesn’t really think the food looks appetizing, still, but he could eat. The idea of going back for more while the two of them suffer through poking at food they don’t want is… no. Is it better to draw breakfast out? What comes next? But he doesn’t really want to try to go back for seconds, he just wants to avoid the Grandmaster’s idea of entertainment a little longer…

 

He’s been unhesitating in sending animals he’s fed and watered, cleaned up after, stroked the fur of, to their deaths in the name of science. If this is some cosmic experiment, gathering them with their faces the same and… and poking at them for whatever ends, can he condemn the Grandmaster and not assign some condemnation to himself, if he is to a thing as powerful as the Grandmaster as an animal is to him? It feels that way, to be near him. He’s… he talks about ridiculous things and he makes ridiculous faces, but he has powers Seth doesn’t understand, and he talks about himself like he won’t… die, the way they will, like death is inevitable for everyone but him somehow. Maybe he’s crazy-- definitely he’s crazy by human standards, but he’s not human, is he? Is he normal, for his kind? Does he have a kind? 

 

He wants and doesn’t want another waffle. He’s never even… does he even like waffles? Normally he’d rather have the eggs. He’d probably have taken whatever the meat was, except the way the other two kind of recoiled from it made him wonder if it was… if it was really from something familiar or not, if it was safe. But they didn’t question the eggs, the waffles, the coffee. And if the Grandmaster want to keep them around for his experiments or his games, he wouldn’t feed them something they couldn’t safely eat.

 

He’s a savory guy, not a sweet guy, as a rule. But the eggs hadn’t looked good, and the meat could have been anything, and it’s not like he has any hard and fast dietary restrictions. There are things he likes and things he doesn’t like, but he’s not fussy, he’s not opposed to trying things. He might be perfectly happy eating the meat of some alien creature, he’d just like to know what the creature is like before tucking in. A purple cow, a giant beetle, a space fish, whatever. But not if it would put the others off their breakfasts even more than they already are, to see him go for it, they need to at least try to eat, they all need to keep their strength up.

 

And it could have been anything. Not knowing what it came from, he couldn’t rule out that it was something he wouldn’t be comfortable eating. Some men might be put off by a giant insect, or even a cow or a chicken that was the wrong color. And he doesn’t know the personal dietary restrictions of the others. The only thing that would really stop Seth in his tracks is, if it was sentient, or sapient, or close enough to it. An intelligent enough creature, he wouldn’t want to eat… and he doesn’t really know that he trusts the Grandmaster not to feed him an animal just as smart as he is.

 

Well, as an average human, at any rate. Anything could exist now that he knows Sakaar exists, up to and including beef-with-brains. Maybe it’s best to go vegetarian until he can take a look at the livestock.

 

He’s thinking about lab animals, when the Grandmaster leads them from breakfast-- not the ones he’s used for trial runs, but rats in mazes. What’s the point of what he’s doing with them? What does he want from it? Making them jump through hoops, showing them how easily they could die and then giving them food, he’s setting up the rules without saying so, setting them up the way you’d teach an animal-- here’s the carrot, here’s the stick. You don’t want the electric shock, but you want the pellet. You don’t tell a lab rat how it can make you happy, you just let it look at the consequences and the rewards and you watch it run.

 

So where are they running, and why?

 

He feels queasy on the glass elevators that take them up and down massive towers, doesn’t look down as they cross a skybridge on one floor, tries in vain to focus on how he might retrace his steps to return to their suite. They haven’t taken that many turns, he doesn’t think, and yet he feels hopelessly lost by it all. Everything’s so…  _ big _ . 

 

So where are they running?

 

And why?

 

The Grandmaster leads them into a skybox overlooking some kind of stadium. Big, rounded, looks like a dirt floor, what he can see of it. Screens and floodlights yet to turn on, and stands that people are beginning to fill. 

 

“I’m not really a sports guy.” David says, shifting awkwardly. 

 

Ian goes to the window, looks down over it all, then takes a quick step back. Heights a problem? He moans and covers his mouth a little like they might be. Seth doesn’t blame him-- not that heights are his own personal issue, normally, but with how off-kilter the whole planet has him, he hadn’t enjoyed the elevators and skybridge, either. He hadn’t even checked to see how the others handled that, the trip. 

 

He should have. He should have thought about Ian’s leg, at least, he thinks he should have thought about that. He should have thought about how maybe the only other two human beings were feeling, especially with how little they’d eaten, he should have thought more about them. But what would he have done to fix it if they hadn’t been okay? What good is it to notice if he can’t do anything?

 

There’s a couch. Fancy, maybe made for looks more than comfort, and huge, spanning much of the room. Ian sits down hard, and Seth and David join him, over at one end. The Grandmaster plants himself in the center, spreads his arms across the back and makes himself comfortable, tilts his head back with a sigh only to sit back up when the door slides open behind them. 

 

Displeasure flashes across his face for a moment and he picks up the staff from the spot beside him on the couch, and Seth cringes, leans into David beside him until he sees the Grandmaster break into a grin after taking in the poor soul who’d interrupted them, the nearly-an-ex-soul, maybe, who turns out to be someone-- something?-- bearing a tray of cocktails.

 

It’s a person, sort of, but an alien person. Not alien like the Grandmaster, who looks like them only old and dressed like he lives in space, like a real alien. He or she or they or it has pale white skin that flashes with color when the light hits it, like an opal, and hair like raven feathers, only the hair might actually be fine little feathers, cascading from the head down the neck and shoulders. Pale eyes glittering in the pale face, they’d disappear without the painted gold liner rimming them, the smudges of kohl. Electric blue lips, the color of the line down the Grandmaster’s chin. Was the color just popular on Sakaar, or did using it mark attendants in some way? Dressed in a dark, short shift with a stripe of shiny gold down the center.

 

He or she or they or it has a human enough frame, androgynous but not like a young child seems androgynous. Long, thin fingers that taper, dark blue at the ends, no nails of any kind-- that’s what he thinks disturbs him most, no nails. Flat features, strange but beautiful, except that the hands bother him, the lack of nails bothers him.

 

“Hey, baby, you, uh… you new on the job?”

 

He or she or they or it giggles at the Grandmaster’s attention, head tilting this way and that, preening. 

 

“These fit for human consumption?” He asks, takes one of the glasses and tastes the contents before nodding, though their server says something in a low, melodious voice. Not English, perhaps not any human language. The Grandmaster chuckles and nods, whatever it was. “Well, then why don’t you stay and watch the entertainment with us?”

 

He or she or they or it unfolds long, spindly legs from the bottom of the tray and sets it before Seth, before folding his- or her- or their- or itself onto the sofa, a respectful-but-hopeful distance from the Grandmaster. 

 

“Are they?” Seth asks, pointing to the tray. He tries not to flinch, when the Grandmaster looks at him. “Fit for human consumption?”

 

“Oh, honey, I wouldn’t let you have it if it wasn’t. I, uh, I don’t like to break my toys before they even get fun.” He chuckles. “And you’re going to be… a lot of fun. You like this one? Maybe the two of you want to join the afterparty?”

 

Seth looks away, shrugging. He doesn’t want to say ‘no’ outright, he doesn’t want to be seen as unwilling to play, whatever ‘play’ means, but he doesn’t want those weird, nail-less hands to touch him. Maybe going out with a girl a time or two back on earth doesn’t mean much now that he’s here, if he’s going to be here a long time, but he’d liked her, and he’s not really interested in getting laid at the moment, not interested in this ‘afterparty’, not interested in a very alien alien. The implication makes him feel… warm, uncomfortable. His nerves jangle at the mere thought of what the afterparty implies. The way the Grandmaster says it.

 

The alien alien gives Seth an appraising look, he sees the tilt of his-her-their-its head out of the corner of his eye.

 

“You guys want a drink?” Seth offers. Ian shakes his head, still has his hand clamped over his mouth, maybe hasn’t eaten enough to want booze on his stomach, and maybe it’s a little early, but Seth feels like he could use a drink now, more than any other time in his life.

 

“I’ll hold onto one.” David nods. “Don’t know what sports they play in space, but… maybe it’s more tolerable on a drink.”

 

Ian moans softly, eyes closing. Down the couch, the Grandmaster chuckles.

 

As the stands fill up and anticipatory cheers begin, Ian starts rocking slightly in his seat. The lights and the screens burst to life, and Seth sees what he hadn’t before, what Ian had seen. The floor of the stadium-- the arena-- is painted with sprays of color, and even though the colors are assorted, the way that they’re arrayed… some green, some blue, one bright pink, and just one rust red… the pattern of it, though. 

 

It’s blood.

 

“You sure about that drink?” Seth asks Ian, his voice quivering, but Ian just shakes his head again.

 

Seth knocks his own back. It burns and he feels lightheaded on just one, and he’s glad not to face whatever they’re going to see here sober, but maybe he can’t fault Ian refusing. Maybe he worries if he starts now, he’ll crawl into the bottle and he won’t crawl out, dealing with the horror of it all. Or maybe it’s the opposite and he just doesn’t enjoy the stuff, but either way. He’ll ask him once it starts if he’s really sure, and then he thinks he’ll take Ian’s unwanted drink himself. He doesn’t want to remember today if he can help it.

 

The Grandmaster doesn’t use the screens that show his arena from every angle, to address the crowds. He projects an enormous image of himself-- how? What technology? He greets the cheering throngs with such a weirdly paternalistic air, jokes around a little, introduces the day’s ‘entertainment’ with all the warmth and excitement of a father taking his children to a baseball game, instead of… well, anything like what it is, like what he is. Whatever he is. And all the while, the Grandmaster on the couch watches his own projected self with intense concentration and an unreadable smile. And then the giant Grandmaster vanishes, and the games begin.

 

It’s brutal, more than he could have imagined. None of the combatants are human-- the Grandmaster tells them that like it  _ matters _ . Some of them look human until they bleed in sprays of those blues and greens, some don’t. They fight beasts, some kind of robotic  _ thing _ , each other.

 

It occurs to him that the beasts might be people, too, that he doesn’t know anything about any of these aliens. That the machine could be a living thing with cybernetic attachments so extensive as to be mistaken for a machine. That they could all be people.

 

It’s too big an idea to hold in his head, to think of them as people when he can’t  _ do _ anything. He  _ can’t do anything _ . Why does he have to be shown this when he can’t do anything?

 

He turns to Ian, reaches past David to touch his arm, and Ian turns to look at him. There are tears running down his face, Seth doesn’t know what to do with that, either, can’t do anything to fix that because the only way to fix that would be to fix the whole damn situation, and he can’t do anything.

 

“Ian…”

 

He shakes his head. Seth grabs the drink, then pauses, looking to David. David looks sick, face drawn in disgust and anguish. 

 

“Here.” Seth pushes the drink into his hand. Watches David take a gulp before passing it back. “You sure?”

 

He nods. Seth knocks the rest back. He looks around the skybox-- at some point the Grandmaster must have sent their server off, he-she-they-it hasn’t returned. It’s just the four of them now, the Grandmaster looking over to them with a wide grin now and then, when he’s not cheering, his attention on the arena.

 

Something gets its head ripped off, Seth flinches from the viscous yellow-green fluid that pours down as the strange head is held aloft in a scarred and burned hand. He can hardly  _ process _ it, it’s unreal. Beyond anything he has a framework for. He knows the fluid is like blood, it doesn’t look like blood, the thing looks like a creature made for a scary movie, not a living being. Its forelegs twitch in death, the victor roars and shakes the head in his grip with enthusiasm, and Seth just feels  _ lost _ .

 

David puts an arm around him and pulls him in, pulls him close to the tight huddle with his fellow humans, and he’s drunk and half-numb and awash in more horror than he can properly experience, and so he just lets himself go limp against David.

 

Ian is whispering something, but the words refuse to coalesce. Seth hears them and does not process them. He couldn’t even say what language they were. He would assume English and yet it would make no difference either way if they were or not, for how little his brain latches onto any of it. He doesn’t hear the words, only the sussuration, like a buzz in his ear, only the fervency. He lets it wash past him, closes his eyes and lets his world narrow as much as possible, tries to leave the arena all on the outside.


	3. Day One- David Levinson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David doesn't know what to make of anything on Sakaar. 
> 
> He doesn't know what to make of Seth and Ian, either, yet, but they're all he's got.

None of them eat lunch. Servants bring in more trays, after an indeterminate length of time, and David asks one for water, but aside from the lavender cocktail weiner-looking things the Grandmaster himself shovels back a few of, the food goes untouched. 

 

Seth’s stomach rumbles, but he takes another cocktail and doesn’t take any food. He looks a little green around the gills. Not that David blames him. He’d basically eaten nothing but sugar. Carbs, alcohol, all just processed into more sugar. With the horrorshow before them and that on his stomach, of course he’s doing poorly.

 

David makes sure Ian has a glass of water, he holds it in two shaking hands, sips slowly at it the way David sips at his own. The three of them stay in their tight huddle, arms around each other when they aren’t drinking. It’s not much but it’s all they have, each other, in the face of this.

 

They’re strangers still, they haven’t really talked to each other, not much. Hell, he didn’t even tell them what he did for a living, or… or anything. But they’re all he has here.

 

This is what his dad would do, he thinks. Put an arm around a stranger and be present. He doesn’t know how to be his dad-- his dad would be comforting in a way he isn’t, in a situation like this. 

 

All he has is Ian and Seth… and the knowledge of what his dad would do. 

 

What his dad would say.

 

He doesn’t need to imagine what his dad would say-- Ian says it for him. Ian, his head laid against David’s, his hand clinging tight to the front of David’s shirt, every time the bodies are cleared from the field below, Ian prays. 

 

David had, unvoiced, had mouthed the words while half numb with shock, when the fourth man was killed. Younger than Seth, even, and he’s sure Seth is the youngest of their current group by a little bit. Maybe not a kid, the dead man, maybe twenty-five. Not a day over that. Ian had been too much in shock to then, he supposes, or had seen he was already and left him to it, but Ian prays every time for the combatants in the arena.

 

David doesn’t think it’s the same. When he’d prayed over the puddle that used to be Seth’s roommate, he’d known it had been a person, a human person as scared as any of them and without the kind of life experience that would let him deal with it. When he’d prayed over the puddle that used to be Seth’s roommate, he’d had every reason to think a boy with his own face would also be Jewish, and he’d thought if he didn’t muddle his way through trying, what his father would say. If he hadn’t stayed with the body, as Ian was also ready to do.

 

But the creatures fighting in the arena aren’t human. They don’t care if a human prays over them, if the prayer means something. He doesn’t know how much they think like people, some of them look like humans but aren’t. 

 

Does Ian pray for them because he hadn’t been able to before, for the poor kid who got melted? Or would he have anyway, does he do it for himself? Well, of course he does it for himself, the aliens below don’t have any expectations.

 

Eventually, they’re allowed to leave. They all lean on each other as they walk on shaking legs, Ian in the center with his cane held useless in one hand and his arms around their shoulders, David and Seth at either side, trying to support him and needing his support just as much…

 

The Grandmaster takes them back to the dining hall, where there’s another buffet. The food is familiar here, unlike the things brought to them in the skybox-- a couple shapes of pasta, a few sauces, what looks like fish, what looks like chicken, a very ordinary looking green salad, a chafing dish of broccoli… David’s stomach grumbles, but the idea of eating still makes him nauseated. Still… they don’t have much choice. They’ll be sick if they  _ don’t _ try.

 

“You should eat something.” He urges. He brings Ian to sit down at the table, the seat he’d had at breakfast. “I’ll bring you some. Do you want to try anything that looks like meat?”

 

Ian’s face tells him everything he thinks he needs to know. 

 

“Just try. We can’t starve.” He says, and when Ian looks like he might just be okay with that thought, David grabs his shoulder, squeezing hard and shaking his head. “Whatever he shows us, whatever he does to us. We can’t starve.”

 

Ian nods slowly, reaches up to give his hand a brief, emphatic press, and David leaves him, joining Seth at picking over the buffet, carefully juggling two plates this time. The salad looks… uninspiring. Then again, he thinks most salads do, there’s nothing about iceberg lettuce to recommend it. He puts broccoli on both plates, and covers it with what looks like a cheese sauce. Pasta, and he’s not sure about Ian’s preferences for sauce, so he puts marinara on one and alfredo on the other, and he hopes the cheese sauce will be enough protein to take them ‘til morning, because it’s not exactly a balanced meal or anything, but it’s the best they’re going to manage, and even then, they’re going to feel sickish. 

 

He wraps bread in a napkin and shoves it down into his pocket. If they have more of an appetite later, away from the dining hall, any of them, well… it’s something. 

 

Seth passes him coming back to the buffet, and when he returns he’s carrying two more glasses and a carafe of water. David flashes him a grateful smile.

 

Seth’s plate is a mess, maybe David should have handled feeding all of them. There’s a limp half-serving of salad drenched in vinaigrette, one of the possible chicken breasts-- also, disgustingly, covered in the same vinaigrette-- and three pieces of the cake David hadn’t even looked at. 

 

There’s being too addled to feed himself correctly, David thinks, and then there’s this. 

 

“Did you want cake?” Seth asks, seeing him look. “Because I could--”

 

He cuts himself off when David shakes his head, when Ian does the same. He digs into his plate, only to stop halfway through his possibly-chicken, lowering his fork with a look of stunned disgust.

 

“What am I  _ eating _ ?”

 

“Does it taste like chicken?”

 

“I-- Yes. No. I don’t-- Anything could taste like chicken, I just… What did I put on my  _ plate _ ?”

 

“Do you want me to get you something?”

 

He shakes his head, moving on from the half-eaten chicken to the cake. “I’ll just eat this.”

 

“I’ll get you something.” David insists. He slips the napkin-wrapped bread off to Ian, while the Grandmaster is distracted speaking with an attendant, and then he returns to the buffet. He makes up a plate like the ones he’d made himself and Ian, and figures whatever pasta sauce he chooses is going to be better than the mess that was Seth’s first plate.

 

He smuggles more bread back to the table in his pockets.

 

“Thanks.” Seth says. He picks more slowly at the broccoli and pasta, though he’s still outpacing Ian, as he forces himself to take each bite…

 

David finishes his plate-- is pretty sure he knows what his dad would say if he knew David was sitting around on an alien planet, provided with a buffet and not eating, when he can’t be sure he’ll be fed tomorrow. He can’t be sure. The Grandmaster makes a big deal out of giving them things, but he also melted that boy. He also had all those things in the arena fight to the death. He could decide not to feed them at any time.

 

Ian speaks up, when the Grandmaster mentions the afterparty again, saying they’ll all need their sleep before tomorrow, and the three of them are allowed to retire, though there’s a ‘this time’ to it that David isn’t comfortable with. Still, they’re allowed to retire, to quietly get ready for bed. To stash the smuggled, napkin-wrapped bread in a dresser drawer in the room David shares with Ian.

 

The bathroom is large, a long row of sinks, a couple stalls, a couple urinals, a cupboard of rolled-up towels, three waiting toiletry kits on a shelf.  _ Three _ . Had he had one spirited away, or had he always known he would kill one of them. A doorway through to a shower room that reminds David of his high school gym, freestanding sets of showerheads for four to gather around at a time. At this point, they could each have their own, a little privacy. Or they could take quick showers in shifts. A couple of plastic chairs in the corner that could be dragged over.

 

They agree upon shifts with very little conversation, so that they can shower alone. They sit quietly waiting their own turns, and then they sit quietly again after they’ve all done, until Ian says they might as well try to sleep, and Seth settles down along one length of the enormous couch. They turn the light off over him as they return to their own room, settle into their own beds, and then it’s just quiet, and darkness, and David doesn’t know if sleep is ever going to take him.

 

“Are you used to sleeping alone?”

 

David rolls onto his side, squinting across the room to the shape of Ian in the dark. David tosses and turns most of the night, has to fight to get comfortable and usually wakes up not in the same position he fell asleep in. Weirdly, if he takes a nap during the day, he’s a rock, it’s only at night. He tosses and turns, but once he does fall asleep, he gets his eight hours with no trouble. Moves around less with Connie than when he’s alone, for all the complaints she’s ever had, sharing a bed with him was never one of them…

 

“I guess I am.” He answers, the words coming out slow. “I’m, uh… I’m-- My wife and I are… we’re making another go at it, but we don’t… Sometimes we sleep together, sometimes we don’t, right now. Working our way back to, uh, to normal. Before that I was alone a while.”

 

“That’s good. Well, I mean… not now that we’re here, but-- That’s good, you guys are working things out. I never… My ex wives wouldn’t give me a second chance if you paid them.” Ian laughs, a short, soft, sad little bark of a laugh. “Which is fine, I like my current, uh… situation. Situation before this here. Wouldn’t trade it for anything. But I mean, it’s good, that you guys are putting the work in and giving each other the space to work through it, that’s… that’s smart, careful.”

 

“You like your freedom?”

 

“Hell no. No, I’m-- We’re not married, I’m not married, legally. But, uh… it’s been about a year. We’re happy, you know, we… I don’t sleep so well alone, actually. Feel free to throw something at me if I wake you, I-- You know, if I wake you, with a nightmare, or just… moving around too much.”

 

“Nah, I toss and turn when I’m alone.” David smiles. “You’re fine.”

 

“I’ll probably get nightmares.”

 

“You probably won’t be alone, after today.” He pauses. “Even if it hadn’t been for today.”

 

“What do you have nightmares about? Sorry, that’s… that’s a hell of a question for a guy I met this, this morning. I don’t… We… It’s the face thing, maybe.”

 

“I don’t think it’s that. I think whatever face you had, it’s… We’re from Earth. Different years, maybe different… maybe different Earths, even. Parallel worlds, but… But we’re from Earth, and we’re here. There’s a bond in that. Um… aliens, actually.” David says. It’s… not the whole truth. It’s enough for tonight.

 

“Oh. Wow. So this... Hey… look-- You can wake me up if you need to. If I’m not already awake. If you just need another person around, you can wake me.”

 

“What do you have nightmares about?”

 

There’s a long pause. Ian weighing out how much truth is enough truth, perhaps. David can hear him swallow, once, in the dark.

 

“Night I had my, uh… the injury, my leg. Used to dream I was back there every night, for a while.”

 

David doesn’t ask how it happened.  _ That _ would be a hell of a question for a guy he just met this morning. This, though… this is about as much of the truth as he thinks either of them needs.

 

“You can wake me up, too, you know. If you need to.” He says. He knows Ian won’t, he already knows Ian won’t. “Hey… you have kids?”

 

“Yeah. You?”

 

“No. We… we talked about it once, me and Connie, when we were-- you know, early on. But we had time then, and her career was… I’d said, you know, if you want to take time off to have them, I can be the stay-at-home parent after that, she was always… Connie had ambition. She’s smart, and people like working with her. She’s… she’s the best. And I wasn’t… I mean I’m smart, but ambition? I’d have been happy staying at home. But then we split, and things were complicated, and now… now we’re both so busy, and we don’t have the same kind of time to think about it. We haven’t talked about whether it’s something we even want right now, and I don’t know. I don’t know… How is she? I disappeared, and… I was down the hall, she might have slept through it, but now I’m missing a whole day, what does she think? When… when do we get back to our families? Will it be too late? What about my father, when he finds out I’m missing, what… Just… what?”

 

“I don’t know. But… you’re right about one thing. Whatever he does, we have to eat. We have to keep each other going. We have to give each other the best possible chance of getting home, whenever… whenever that happens. This might be a marathon, not a sprint, and we can’t let each other stumble. Uh, so to speak. Seth, too. That guy… he’s not… We should have dragged the couch cushions in, set him up on the floor, I don’t like that he’s alone out there.”

 

“He knows he can knock. He’s okay. I mean-- not okay, but… He’s eating, he’s staying on his feet. I just think… he doesn’t know what he’s doing, that’s all. But he’s… I mean, do any of us?”

 

Ian hums. They both fall silent. Sleep… doesn’t come. For either of them-- he can hear Ian moving about restlessly even as he does the same.

 

The bed’s too big. It’s not just that Connie isn’t in it. It’s bigger than the bed he sleeps in when he’s alone. He could handle another night without Connie, though he desperately wants to be able to curl into her now, desperately wishes he had his head on her chest, her fingers in his hair, her voice telling him this was all just a terrible dream, that he’s home and safe. This isn’t a dream, it’s too different, and he’d been able to eat the food and taste it, really taste it, not like in dreams. He doesn’t dream about being taken, about all the strange aliens he’d seen in the arena, he only dreams about the destruction of Manhattan or about the ship, dreams that they hadn’t gotten free of it in time some nights, but this is too different to be a dream…

 

The bed’s too big, and maybe he’d sleep better if he was over in Ian’s, but how could he even ask? He’s a grown man, and grown men don’t ask to sleep with each other. Well, maybe some of them do, but usually he imagines there’s something sexual involved, it’s not because they’re scared, it’s not because they can’t handle a strange room or the threat of a coming nightmare.

 

But then… Ian didn’t sleep well alone, either, he’d said. Maybe sleeps alone less well than David, who’s at least used to it enough. 

 

“Ian?”

 

“Can’t sleep, either?”

 

“Yeah.” He sighs. And he tells himself, ask him, he tells himself three, four times, just  _ ask him _ , but he can’t.

 

“You want me to talk about advanced principles in mathematics until you fall asleep?”

 

“Might not work. I’m pretty good at advanced mathematics.” He smiles. “Besides, then who’d bore you to sleep?”

 

“I’m a difficult man to bore, anyway.” Ian chuckles. David can hear him shifting, sees the shape of him sit up in the dark. “C’mere, come over here. I didn’t tell you about my kids… as long as we’re not sleeping, you-- you wanna hear about the kids?”

 

David takes the invitation. If they’re not sleeping… sitting up together side by side sounds a lot less lonely than talking across the room, the room bigger than it needs to be… 

 

“Tell me about your kids.” He nods, climbing into bed next to Ian, sitting up against his headboard. “How big are they?”


End file.
